Robert M. Hopper - The book of Adam 01 - Autobiography of the first Human Clone.pdf - Robert M. Hopper - allforjesus2001

The Book of Adam: Part I

Autobiography of the First Human Clone

by Adam Elwell-2

A Novella by Robert M. Hopper

Part I of IV in The Book of Adam

For Complete Series Information:

http://www.robhopper.com/

Smashwords Edition

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author.

A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.

– Mark Twain

PROLOGUE

Nine months after I died, my daughter gave birth to me.

It was more than fifty years after my birth when I first saw the recording of our umbilical cord

being severed.

“May I hold him?”

I caught my breath. I hadn’t heard my mother’s voice in so many years. Her gentle intonations

conjured forgotten memories of an old form of happiness, before shadows of loss and sadness

began to dampen even the best times.

I walked toward my mom’s holographic image, my fingertips trying to touch the laser plasma

that comprised her face. She looked so much younger than the images in my mind. Her blond

hair untouched by gray, her smooth cheeks and chin unblemished by worry, her blue-gray eyes

still looking like those of a child delighting in an unexpected present.

Her name was Sarah. She was the daughter of the man I was cloned from. And she had just

become the mother of her father’s clone with my birth. Or “Adam’s Rebirth,” as the home video

was labeled. A video discovered in one of my Grandma Lily’s storage boxes.

Lily is in the holotape as well, hovering nearby as the nurse begins wiping off my small body. “Is

Adam okay?”

I tense when I hear my great-grandfather voice from behind. Lyle Gardener, the man who

recorded the event. The man who made human cloning possible. I turn to see the doctor and Lyle

reviewing the medical scans. “Everything’s in order,” Lyle says. “Fingers, toes, organs, and

brain.”

“But is it really Adam? I mean, his soul?” Lily asks. “Does he remember me?”

The nurse finishes my initial cleaning. Lily opens her arms to receive me, but frowns as the nurse

instead walks to Sarah’s side. She eases my newborn body into my mother’s arms. My tiny head

wobbles so that my face looks up at hers. Naturally, on that night of March 11, 2034, I did not

yet realize that my mother within whose womb I had spent the previous nine months was the

newborn daughter I had once cradled in my own arms.

“You have a beautiful soul,” my mom says, smiling before kissing me on my forehead and nose.

“I love you, Michael,” she whispers, calling me by my middle name as she cradles me to her, not

bothering to wipe away her tears, breathing in the scent of her newborn who had moments before

been a part of her own body.

I notice my own tears as my fingertips again attempt to somehow touch the 52-year-old images

around me. Did I have a soul? If so, part of it must have come from my mother. Sarah’s

hologram closes her eyes as she gently rocks me back and forth, humming a familiar lullaby. She

seems to have become oblivious to everything else. Oblivious to her mother and grandfather, to

the doctor and nurses. Even to the throngs of people who had gathered outside the hospital in

spite of a thunderstorm, the din of which I can just hear in the background.

A couple of the bystanders were awed; awed at me, awed at science, awed at the uncertain future

my birth represented. The other thousand-plus were protesting “The Blasphemous Birth,” the

baby created not by God, but by humans who believed they were gods. They saw the

thunderstorm as a sign from an angry deity proclaiming the end of the world. As did Gabrielle

Burns, the drenched woman standing quietly to the side, her calm face upturned to the hospital

room window – the woman who would eventually murder my mother.

Even if I had known all this, my reaction would have been the same: the newborn image of me

began to cry. A sure “sign” that the first human clone was a healthy baby boy, soul or not.

***

A half-century later, and the end of the world still has yet to arrive. What did come to an end was

my early fame. The widespread furor over my existence occurred while I was still the only clone,

too young to realize what was going on, or to comfort my mother who bore the brunt of it.

Cloned births became commonplace while I was still a child, removing me from the spotlight

and affording me a mostly private life, if still not a peaceful one.

So why call renewed attention to myself by writing an autobiography? In part, I’d like to set

straight the rumors attached to my life. In part, I’ve decided to sell my questionable soul for an

embarrassingly large advance from my publisher.

But it’s much more than that. Since my earliest memories, I’ve been told that I would be seen as

the primary example of human cloning, and that humanity’s acceptance or rejection of human

cloning might depend on how I was perceived. By writing this autobiography I hope to give

others some insight as to what it was like to be the world’s first human clone. I hope to help

fellow clones deal with similar issues, and help convince non-clones that we are all human

beings. Whether we are conceived naturally by a mother and father or, as in my case,

manufactured in a laboratory from the cells of dead ancestors, we are neither more nor less

perfect than others.

Most importantly, I hope to convince myself of this.

My dead ancestor’s name was Adam Silva Elwell, after my birth referred to as Adam Elwell-1,

and he was my grandpa. Or, as far as some people are concerned, he was I. Which is why, unlike

most autobiographies, the story of my life begins some sixty years before I was born.

Part I:

The Book of Sarah

I used to almost wish I hadn’t any ancestors, they were so much trouble to me.

– Mark Twain

I was born too early.

That was how it began.

I received the journal of my clone-father on my eighteenth birthday. He handwrote his memoir

late in life in the hope that his next birth – my birth – would correct the mistake of his initial one.

I read it for the first time while sitting next to his grave, the setting of my recurrent nightmares

since I was very young.

Adam-1 was born at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center on the sunny

morning of June 12, 1974 to Michael and Sarah Elwell. Born too early. And his childhood stolen

from him too early.

As his father opened the door, Adam walked into the hospital room alone where his mother lay.

He had to force his legs forward. His chin was trembling before he reached the bed. He felt like

he should say something but didn’t know what, as if he’d forgotten how to talk to his mother. As

if the person he loved most in the world was a stranger.

She looked like a stranger. Her bald head. Her emaciated body. Sarah made a weak smile, and

then lightly petted his head. Neither said a word. There was only her shallow breathing and the

sound of nurses passing outside the door.

The silence wasn’t broken until his mother began reciting familiar lines from their favorite book,

The Hobbit , as Bilbo Baggins joins the quest, leaving his hobbit hole and setting off on his

adventure.

Adam hid his eyes against her shoulder. He wanted to be near her, but he didn’t want to see her

like this.

“I know, sweetie. I know,” she soothed. She kissed his head.

“Please don’t die,” he begged.

Sarah sighed. “I think I have to go, honey. I have to go on this adventure. But we’ll meet again in

Aslan’s Country, okay?”

Adam didn’t answer. That was just another story they’d read. Made-up stories like the kind his

father wrote. Places like Aslan’s Country and the Heaven mentioned in their ancient family Bible

could be equally imaginary.

He held her tighter. She kissed him again.

“I love you, sweetie.”

“I love you too, Mommy,” he cried, but choked at the end.

She made a similar sound, as if mocking him. He felt her shudder and then relax. He pulled

away, looking into her blue-gray eyes. They stared blankly through him, her chapped lips only

slightly parted.

He prodded her timidly on the shoulder to wake her. The movement made her mouth fall open.

Adam jumped and must have screamed something. His father opened the door and a nurse

rushed in behind him. Michael clutched him to his body and gently held his dead wife’s hand.

“We’ll get that,” the nurse said to Michael, glancing at the floor. Adam looked down and saw

that he stood in a puddle of his own urine.

His Aunt Mary pulled him out into the hallway and wiped his shoes. Michael came out of the

room several minutes later, his face pale, eyes red and puffy. He embraced his son for a long

time. Then he straightened up and slowly, silently led them out of the hospital.

***

Fifty years after his mother’s death, Adam was dying on a hospital bed.

“Where’s Sarah?” he asked, words he’d repeated for a half hour as the poison paralyzing his

extremities moved slowly towards his heart.

“She’s on her way,” Lily answered again, more wearily by then. But Adam died minutes before

his mother’s namesake, his daughter Sarah, rushed into the room.

His last journal entry, written the night before his death, appears to be an attempt to reassure

himself: “It’s with great fear I end my life, but the hope outweighs it. With this cup I’ll escape

the Gardeners, and have another mother named Sarah. My hemlock is not the cup of death. It is

the cup of new life. The life I should have had.”

Yet I often wonder what was going through his mind as oblivion approached. Did he second-

guess himself, wondering whether his dream of living forever had just slipped through his

fingers of his own volition, fearing that he would never exist again?

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